


I am No Exception

by blasted0glass



Category: Touhou Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 13:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18703687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasted0glass/pseuds/blasted0glass
Summary: A man is transported to Gensokyo and faces death while failing to understand statistics. He beseeches the Unmoving Great Library for help.





	I am No Exception

The time warp ended abruptly and sound rushed into my ears. Stopped time had been utterly silent. My first impulse had been to ask Sakuya how we moved through air with time frozen, but I had bigger things to worry about at the moment. The floor shook ominously. We were standing in front of a desk in a library that was no longer quiet.

My second impulse would normally be to wonder at the immensity of the library, but my wonder was also forgotten. Indeed the floor was shaking ominously.

The magician in front of me didn’t seem perturbed. She was sitting behind a desk with several books open in front of her. She appeared to be wearing pajamas.

“Are you the Unmoving Great Library, Patchouli Knowledge?” I asked. She nodded but didn’t look up from her book. From her perspective Sakuya and I would have appeared out of thin air. Bookshelves swayed from a battle raging nearby. Still, this magician rested her head on her hand and continued to read. Unmoving indeed.

“This man needs your help.” Sakuya said. “He--” she cut herself short. Talking about my problem might lead to my death. Instead, I decided to demonstrate. I might not get another chance.

I focused. I felt my frustration and fear diminish by a tiny measure. A single small ball of magic appeared in front of me and drifted lazily toward Patchouli. It veered off course, inevitably, but Patchouli’s eyes widened and her focus left her book. I had just cast danmaku.

It was weak danmaku, nothing compared to what I had seen wielded, but it was the first danmaku I had ever produced. Despite everything else going on I felt some pride.

“I see,” she said. “Marisa brought you.”

“Yes. She said that I should beg you for help, and to remind you that you can best maintain your reputation for generosity by helping me.” Patchouli snorted.

“Transformation or extrication?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you want,” Patchouli said, frowning, “me to extricate your magic, or transform you instead?”

“Ah. I…” For a moment I thought that by ‘extrication’ she meant she could have sent me home.

I hesitated.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three days ago Marisa had found me in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. That was shortly after I had appeared in Gensokyo in the first place. She was a witch, and she had landed from flight on her broomstick to rob me.

“If you ain’t carrying anything useful, you might as well head back to the village before something worse comes along.”

“The village?” I said. I didn’t know anything back then.

“The human village. Y’know, the only place where youkai aren’t supposed to eat’cha?” She turned to look at me. “How are you still living?”

“I just got here. One minute I was napping in my study, the next…” I waved my hand, “I am in a forest of bamboo.” She continued to stare at me.

“You just appeared… in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost?”

“I guess?”

“Well, that’s odd. You don’t look like a princess to me,” she said. “But what are you?” Then she shot me with magic in the form of a giant laser beam, a cylinder of light at least three feet in diameter. I didn’t even see her draw the weapon that allowed her to cast it.

It didn’t hurt. Instead I felt my apprehension and frustration with Marisa evaporate. _Be calm. And dance!_

So I danced in place.

Marisa cackled for several seconds, which was confusing, but it didn’t mean that I’d stop dancing.

“Ah, yep, you’re a magician for sure!” She laughed uproariously at my clumsy freestyle moves. “Ahhh, this might be a problem.” I danced without concern.

After several seconds my apprehension suddenly returned and was joined by a healthy amount of embarrassment. “What the hell just happened?”

“I hit you with danmaku,” she said while smiling. “Anyone with magic who loses a danmaku battle has to do the bidding of the winner.”

“What? With magic? Also, you wanted me to _dance?”_

“Hey, I had to choose something you wouldn’t ever do coincidentally! At least I didn’t make you hit yourself in the face…” she frowned. “And yah, only those with magical abilities are affected. If you weren’t magical you’d just be unconscious.”

“In the middle of a forest full of monsters.”

“Youkai, not monsters. Don’t look at me that way! But…” she looked away for a moment. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ve got bigger problems than being eaten by some random youkai. Hmmm. How am I going to explain this?”

“Explain what?”

“Ahah! I’ll think about it for _five minutes._ ” She turned away and started to think.

“Now hold on,” I started to say. She held up a hand.

“Five minutes of silence.” She blasted me with the laser again.

With that, all I could do was wait. She paced back and forth.

Less than sixty seconds later she closed the distance to me so fast that I fell over backward. She bent down and cupped my ear to whisper. Her witch’s hat was like an umbrella that we could both stand under. “I’m only going to tell you this once, so pay close attention.” Her proximity made it hard to concentrate. She had a distinct body odor, and it wasn’t pleasant.

“Only youkai are allowed to use danmaku freely,” she continued. ”There are restrictions on others. There is a youkai that can hear and see anything in Gensokyo. I can’t safely tell you her name. She kills any... well, I’d say at least half of all humans that use magic. I can already tell that she’d kill you.” Marisa leaned back and met my eyes for a moment, as though to underscore the seriousness of this statement. I didn’t say anything. When she leaned back in she whispered into my other ear. “She can teleport. You’re lucky she isn’t watching at the moment or else she would’ve smashed ya’ with a stop sign or perhaps an entire train. However, she’s stupid in certain very specific ways. You’ll be alright as long as you aren’t caught. Also, I know someone who can help you. You have many questions. I won’t be able to answer them right now without drawing unwanted attention. But I’m going to help you myself, right now. Because I can.”

She stood up and spoke loudly, almost proudly. “I’m going to take you to the Library!” She glanced at her broomstick and then back to me. “On foot.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And she took me to the library. We had journeyed laboriously toward the Scarlet Devil Mansion and its great library, and it’s great librarian who is also called The Great Unmoving Library.

Along the way I witnessed many danmaku battles. We encountered youkai constantly, so I started to get used to it. The lightshow of a danmaku battle consists of hundreds of flying orbs interspersed with geometric shapes, all ablaze. The wills of the participants are made manifest. It’s a hypnotic spectacle. Each participant tries to gain control of the other by hitting them with enough danmaku to subdue them.

Battle is common in Gensokyo. I came to understand that danmaku is a system to prevent the excessive number of youkai from outright killing each other. Youkai don’t do well in close proximity. Gensokyo functioned as a sort of youkai reserve, so the only way to prevent everyone from murdering each other was by settling disputes with danmaku battles. Yukari was the main enforcer of that system, but not the only one. Marisa said it was a good system: youkai didn’t kill each other as often as they would otherwise, and it gave magical humans as powerful as her a chance to influence things as well.

She emphasized that the system gave me nothing at all, and I should do exactly as she said. I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t argue because she saved my life.

Over, and over, _and over again,_ she saved my life. We fought youkai almost constantly for those three days, so often that I doubted anyone who wasn’t a youkai could be expected to survive on their own. And yet Marisa claimed to be a human, albeit a magical one.

There were also normal, non-magical humans in Gensokyo. The humans had a safe zone and didn’t often venture from it. Unfortunately for me, the Scarlet Devil Mansion was well outside the safe zone, for some reason.

Whenever Marisa battled I stood as far away as possible to ensure no stray danmaku hit me and revealed my secret. I’m sure many of those she fought wondered why she had a ‘normal’ human with her, but since she never lost she never had to explain. She avoided being hit even once, which I frankly found amazing.

Winning came with advantages. Marisa sent the losers to make distractions and decrease the chances that we would be observed at any given moment. To cause "incidents", she said, "and to give that Miko something to do". It had been a chaotic few days in Gensokyo. Apparently there were limits to what you could demand of a loser, lest the compulsion fail before they finished the task--even so, Marisa had been creative with the distractions she thought up.

We eventually made it to the Scarlet Devil Mansion. We snuck in the back, completely bypassing a sleeping guard. However, the first thing we encountered inside was Yukari herself, that is, the youkai that would kill me if she knew I could do magic. I knew it was her because she stepped out of a gap in reality that was a black abyss filled with red glowing eyes, and also because she helpfully introduced herself before any attempts to murder me.

Apparently word had gotten around that Marisa was the source of the trouble, so Yukari was here to deal with that. I hoped to survive by not saying anything stupid. I reasoned that I still didn’t look like I could do magic, so despite the circumstances I might have a chance if I could just play it cool.

Marisa opened fire as soon as introductions were finished.

While Marisa went to battle, I ran like a coward--which proved to be useless, of course, because Yukari could make portals through space. It became apparent to me how she could listen and watch surreptitiously, and teleport besides. It seemed like she was around every corner. She had tried to ask me questions while dodging Marisa’s danmaku--half in a portal at all times, perhaps kicking Marisa with her lower half, or something, while talking to me with the upper--but I continued to run and didn’t answer any of her questions.

Before long another youkai had joined the fight, a little girl named Flandre. She was a resident of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Marisa had warned me about her and said that we were to avoid confronting her. She didn’t seem to abide by the ‘don’t kill each other’ rule for danmaku users, and her power was to basically made things explode constantly. Not a safe person to talk to, I gathered, but at least she didn’t go outside much.

In this case her presence worked to our advantage. I didn’t get a very good look, as I was still fleeing for my life, but she apparently engaged against Yukari instead of us and bought me some precious seconds. Furthermore, the resident maid--Sakuya--had revealed herself before yanking me from the battle using time magic. With her help I was able to make it over to the Library in intermittent bursts of stopped time and rapid explanation. That was a few seconds before I encountered Patchouli Knowledge.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another rumble shook the mansion.

“Well?” said Patchouli.

“Er, which would you recommend?” She looked annoyed for a moment, but then calmed again.

“I have to remember that you are unfamiliar with Gensokyo. Well, if long-term survival is your goal, magic helps immensely and you should avoid having it extricated. Non-magical humans don’t have a very good life expectancy in Gensokyo.” No kidding. We’d fought almost half a dozen powerful youkai on the way here and most of them seemed pretty willing to kill humans. Several had directly threatened to eat me.

“On the other hand, the transformation process is painful and disorienting. You’ll spend months recovering at a minimum. You’ll have to get used to your new body. And you’ll never be the same afterward, of course.”

“Will… she… still be likely to kill me if I choose to keep my magic?”

“You are being overly cautious. You can say Yukari’s name for now.” An explosion rocked the mansion. “She is distracted.”

“Oh. Well, will Yukari kill me if she finds out I transformed instead of getting rid of my magic? Is the deception safe?”

“Ah, her thought process is different than yours. It is different from mine as well. Transforming will be enough to placate her on its own, regardless of how you were originally.”

“In that case, I should probably transform. Before I do that, really fast, is there any way I can predict the changes I’ll undergo?”

“You can’t be serious. We don’t have time to speculate on it.”

“Hey, becoming a youkai is a big deal! I’ve seen people permanently wrapped in shadow, a woman whose voice would make you blind, folks whose heads fly off and land in lakes without provocation!”

“Becoming a… youkai?” Patchouli stared at me. “I think you are confused. The problem isn’t that you’re human. It’s that you’re male.”

“What? But Marisa said--”

“Marisa lied. Your options are to either be magical and female, or mundane and male. Or a cloud of red mist. Now choose.”

“But why--why would Yukari kill all the males?”

“I have theories, but no real explanation. She is famously inscrutable, extraordinarily powerful, and unwilling to give straight answers.”

“And yet just changing my appearance is going to make her spare me?”

“Yes.”

“That’s ridiculous. She’ll know it’s still me.”

“Whether ‘transformed you’ is still you depends on your perspective. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, as long as you aren’t physiologically male she won’t care.” I didn’t respond immediately so she went on. “Yukari is like a fundamental force of nature, that happens to eliminate male danmaku users in Gensokyo and cause a lot of other weird things beyond that. Perhaps it’s to prevent youkai from reproducing, or perhaps she was asked to keep males out by someone with something over her. Maybe it’s just a tradition she is afraid to break, or maybe she does it for no reason at all. Regardless of the explanation, you can’t be a male danmaku user and survive in Gensokyo.”

“I can’t… I can’t believe what you’re saying. If Yukari can make portals, why not just throw me out?”

“It is easier for her to kill you.”

“No it isn’t!”

“From her perspective it is. Particularly since if she lets you out, who knows the circumstances under which you might return. Or maybe it’s just that she doesn’t place any value on your life and killing you is an immediately obvious solution. To her. Whatever the case, you are wasting valuable time.”

“I can’t accept your explanation. I wasn’t prepared for this.”

“Fine. Die then. I can’t believe you are more comfortable becoming a youkai than becoming a woman.” I had reservations about both, truthfully. “Look, how many male youkai did you encounter on the way here?”

“Well, zero, but--”

“But what? That’s all the evidence you need. You surely can’t think it was a coincidence that literally every single danmaku user was female.” Actually I hadn’t thought about it at all, except in the context of feeling bad for not contributing to the battles. Males were supposed to be front and center when fighting, after all, and I sometimes felt like a coward for hiding instead of facing possible death.

Admittedly, I am better at hiding than dying.

“Can I ever be transformed back?”

“Possibly, but you’d just get killed afterward anyway.” There was another explosion, closer this time. Then silence. “You have no time left. What will it be?”

“... okay. Transform me.”

“Darn. I imagine Flandre is getting hungry after all this activity, but now you’re off the menu.”

“What?”--I tried to ask, but she was already casting the spell. I saw Yukari step out from a portal behind Patchouli. I tried to warn her and failed--I couldn’t speak. The world went black. When I woke, Yukari was nowhere to be found.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Are you awake?” asked Patchouli. It woke me up. I sat up too fast. My body was smaller, and it required less effort to sit up. I found myself in a small room without windows.

I tried to put a hand on my head and instead smacked myself in the face. My arms weren’t the same length, and paradoxically felt both easier to move and heavier. I looked at my hands. When I flexed my fingers it felt like they had been cut down to the first knuckle. What I was seeing didn’t match what it felt like I was doing. It made me so uncomfortable that I curled up into a ball on the bed.

My entire body had become foreign to me. The pit of my stomach ached. My original plan had been to ask for a mirror, but I wasn’t ready yet. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.

Probably because I couldn’t. My lungs were a different size, after all.

“That seems about right,” Patchouli said from a seat beside the bed.  “It will be overwhelming at first. It’s going to take you a lot of practice to get used to your new body, but perhaps less than you’d think after just a few minutes. Most of the issues now are about processing. As you continue to experience sensations, your body and mind will continue to correct their expectations until they match what you experience.”

“How long?” I said. My voice didn’t sound right in my own head--too high-pitched, too quiet. It took a lot of effort to speak, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of my new body or my discomfort with the sound of my voice.

“You’ll still be caught off guard about things for years at least, perhaps for the rest of your life. But you should be able to walk without constantly falling down in just a few days. That’s assuming you start practicing now.” I made the effort to sit up.

“Okay then. Can you give me any advice for this situation?”

“Yes. Move as much as possible, as soon as possible. You’ll get bruises that don’t feel localized. That’s because the nerves have been remapped. Don’t let inconvenience or confusion dissuade you. Small injuries will just be more data that your body can integrate.” That was easy for her to say. “Also, when you are too tired to move you should read these.” She set three books beside my bed. I tried to pick one up and I dropped it. Patchouli waved her hand and the book floated back into the air where I could reach it.

She could do magic.

“Is there any way you can speed up my adjustment? Magically?”

“Yes. There are spells to make one more mentally flexible, but the side effects are memory loss and changes to personality. I assumed that would be unacceptable to you.”

“Uh… how much memory loss…?”

“Total.”

“Oh.” The book looked promising. “What is this?”

“That one’s a listing of the flora and fauna of Gensokyo. The other is a summary of the issues magicians face with permanent transformation, and this last one contains the basics of casting danmaku.”

“Ah. Uh… thank you...”

“Of course.” Patchouli stood up. “I’ve got other things to do. I’m going to leave my assistant with you for now so you don’t get into too much trouble.” For the first time I noticed another person standing in the room. She had red hair and bat wings protruding from her head--clearly a youkai.

Patchouli continued to speak. “Her name is Koakuma, or at least that's what everyone calls her. She’ll fulfill any reasonable request. Also, I should mention that I spoke to the Mistress on your behalf and you can stay here for a week.”

“If I can make myself useful in any way--”

“You can’t. After a week you’ll have to find somewhere else. I recommend you try the human village first, since outside of there someone might eat you before you get a chance to convince them you are protected by the danmaku rules.”

“Oh… well, thank you for doing this much. I’d probably be dead without your help.” Her hand was on the door.

“That’s true. There’s one other thing: you haven’t realized it yet, but before long you’re going to decide to get skilled at danmaku so that you can go challenge Yukari. You’ll reason that if you win you could use the compulsion to make Yukari let you out of Gensokyo. You'll never be strong enough to beat her, but becoming more skilled at danmaku is wise regardless.”

“I’m not one to give up just because something seems impossible.” She turned to face me.

"I'm trying to help you. Yukari, and indeed basically everyone else in Gensokyo, is far out of your league."

"You don't know that. I'm still new here."

“You really don’t understand. I’ve spent over a hundred years mastering all types of magic. I’ve read most of the Great Library. I would be the most knowledgeable _human_ magician that’s ever lived, if I was human. Knowledge is literally my name, and as they say, _knowledge is power_.” She paused for a moment. Her long purple hair began to billow as she rose from the floor.

She looked at me with fury so total I almost fell out of the other side of the bed. Then she made the entire room burst into flame.

I screamed, long and loud, the alien sound of my high-pitched voice only frightening me further.

I would have caught on fire and died, immediately, except the flames weren’t real fire. They were danmaku. They didn’t damage the walls or floor, but when they moved through me I felt compelled to _be silent_ and _be still_. My scream died, but the trembling terror bashed around in my chest, alongside my heart.

Patchouli’s face softened.

“When it comes to danmaku I’m only third or fourth strongest… in this mansion. Whereas Yukari is the master of all Gensokyo. Consider your own circumstance. You are a human magician unable to control your own body, much less your own danmaku. You aren’t the first to take issue with Yukari, by any stretch of the imagination, and yet she is still the master of this place. She has been for thousands of years. With all of that in mind, what makes you so special that you think you can ever hope to defeat her?”

I didn’t have a good answer. The compulsion for silence had ended, so I answered anyway.

“Nothing, perhaps,” I said as I tried not to cough. My throat hurt. “But I won’t give up before I’ve even tried. If I can’t beat Yukari with danmaku, maybe I’ll just try talking to her. And if that fails I’ll try some other way of getting home. In any case, I’ve got to know more before I just accept things as they are.”

“Well, I suppose I can agree with that perspective. Good luck.” Patchouli moved to leave.

“Can I borrow some more books?” She slammed the door.

After a moment I stumbled out of bed. I fell down and Koakuma moved to help me get up. I waved her away. Getting back up on my own was one of many things I’d have to get used to.


End file.
